by Stevie Smith
Oh, very well now.
She is quite recovered, said the dog.
But a woodcutter has opined
It was the spirit of Mrs Blow he saw dancing one night
When a full moon fell on the glade of Cluny
With her animals, and that
Clanworthy and Hopdance
Stood upright upon their hind legs
Holding the hand of Mrs Blow the widow
As if she was a child.
If it was Mrs Blow
But he said he thought it was the ghost
Of Mrs Blow, her spirit; and that
The animals, too, did not look like animals; he said
It was three spirits playing ring-a-ring
With crowns on their head.
So everyone remembered then
That a long time ago
The King and Queen had lost their little children
As
A great witch had changed the boys into animals
And the girl into Mrs Blow the widow
Crying: Hopdance, go Hopdance; Clanworthy go,
For a hundred and seven years
Be the animals of Mrs Blow.
Everyone was glad it had come right
And that the princes and the princess
Were dancing in the night.
Oh grateful colours, bright looks!
The grass is green
The tulip is red
A ginger cat walks over
The pink almond petals on the flower bed.
Enough has been said to show
It is life we are talking about. Oh
Grateful colours, bright looks! Well, to go
On. Fabricated things too – front doors and gates,
Bricks, slates, paving stones – are coloured
And as it has been raining and is sunny now
They shine. Only that puddle
Which, reflecting the height of the sky
Quite gives one a feeling of vertigo, shows
No colour, is a negative. Men!
Seize colours quick, heap them up while you can.
But perhaps it is a false tale that says
The landscape of the dead
Is colourless.
O Pug!
to the Brownes’ pug dog, on my lap, in their car, coming home from Norfolk
O Pug, some people do not like you,
But I like you,
Some people say you do not breathe, you snore,
I don’t mind,
One person says he is always conscious of your behind,
Is that your fault?
Your own people love you,
All the people in the family that owns you
Love you: Good pug, they cry, Happy pug,
Pug-come-for-a-walk.
You are an old dog now
And in all your life
You have never had cause for a moment’s anxiety,
Yet,
In those great eyes of yours,
Those liquid and protuberant orbs,
Lies the shadow of immense insecurity. There
Panic walks.
Yes, yes, I know,
When your mistress is with you,
When your master
Takes you upon his lap,
Just then, for a moment,
Almost you are not frightened.
But at heart you are frightened, you always have been.
O Pug, obstinate old nervous breakdown,
In the midst of so much love,
And such comfort,
Still to feel unsafe and be afraid,
How one’s heart goes out to you!
Archie and Tina
Archie and Tina
Where are you now,
Playmates of my childhood,
Brother and sister?
When we stayed in the same place
With Archie and Tina
At the seaside,
We used
To paddle the samphire beds, fish
Crabs from the sea-pool, poke
The anemones, run,
Trailing the ribbon seaweed across the sand to the sea’s edge
To throw it in as far as we could. We dug
White bones of dead animals from the sandhills, found
The jaw-bones of a fox with some teeth in it, a stoat’s skull,
The hind leg of a hare.
Oh, if only; oh if only!
Archie and Tina
Had a dog called Bam. The silver-sand
Got in his long hair. He had
To be taken home.
Oh, if only …!
One day when the wind blew strong
Our dog, Boy, got earache. He had
To be taken home in a jersey.
Oh what pleasure, what pleasure!
There never were so many poppies as there were then,
So much yellow corn, so many fine days,
Such sharp bright air, such seas.
Was it necessary that
Archie and Tina, Bam and Boy,
Should have been there too?
Yes, then it was. But to say now:
Where are you today
Archie and Tina,
Playmates of my childhood,
Brother and sister? Is no more than to say:
I remember
Such pleasure, so much pleasure.
The Poet Hin
The foolish poet wonders
Why so much honour
Is given to other poets
But to him
No honour is given.
I am much condescended to, said the poet Hin,
By my inferiors. And, said the poet Hin,
On my tombstone I will have inscribed:
‘He was much condescended to by his inferiors.’
Then, said the poet Hin,
I shall be properly remembered.
Hin – wiping his tears away, I cried –
Your words tell me
You know the correct use of shall and will.
That, Hin, is something we may think about,
May, may, may, man.
Well yes, true, said Hin, stopping crying then,
Well yes, but true only in part,
Well, your wiping my tears away
Was a part.
But ah me, ah me,
So much vanity, said he, is in my heart.
Yet not light always is the pain
That roots in levity. Or without fruit wholly
As from this levity’s
Flowering pang of melancholy
May grow what is weighty,
May come beauty.
True too, Hin, true too. Well, as now: You have gone on
Differently from what you begun.
Yet both truths have validity,
The one meanly begot, the other nobly,
And as each alone glosses over
What the other says, so only together
Have they a full thought to uncover.
The House of Over-Dew
Over-dew
Became a dread name for Cynthia
In 1937
It was then that Mr Minnim first began to talk openly
About his dear wish.
How dear it was to be
For all of them!
Mr and Mrs Minnim had two sons
Who had done well at school
And won scholarships to Oxford.
Their boyhood was a happy time for all. Then
The elder son married Helen,
A fellow-student at the university,
And, coming down, found a good post with sufficient money.
His wife also
Had money of her own, they were doing well.
The young son, Georgie,
Was engaged to Cynthia. But that did not go so well.
He took a First in Greats, but then
The difficulties began. He could not find a job.
He did nothing, tried again; no good.
He gre
w sulky. It seemed hopeless.
It was now that the dread name of Over-Dew
Was spoken,
And a scheme bruited. It was this:
The Minnims were sincere and practising Christians, to Mr Minnim
Anyone who was not a Christian
Was a half-educated person.
It was, for instance, suggested
That his daughter-in-law should write a Life of St Benedict,
There was no good life of St Benedict, said Mr Minnim.
So Cynthia suggested that Helen should write it,
Because Helen was a Mediaeval History student,
Whereas Cynthia herself was a Latinist,
So why not Helen, with her special knowledge?
But Helen was not a Christian,
So, ‘No’, said Mr Minnim, she was a half-educated person.
The Over-Dew scheme was orthodox Christian.
When Mr Minnim retired from his accountancy work
He said that they should move from the suburb where they lived
And buy the house of Over-Dew, which was
A retreat for missionaries to have
On their leave-holidays in England.
And now it was being run, he said, in a fantastical fashion.
When they bought it
Everything would be better,
And different.
Where was the money to come from? No matter,
They had their savings, also they had the faith
Of Mr and Mrs Minnim.
Mrs Minnim loved her husband
And was pleased to follow him to the end of the earth, and certainly
Over-Dew was not that.
But oh when Cynthia heard that word
It was the knell
Of all her life and love. This, she said,
Is the end of happy days, and the beginning
Of calamity. Over-Dew, she thought,
Shall be the death of my love and the death of life.
For to that tune, she thought,
Shall come up a European war and personal defeat.
The Georgie situation
Was already sad. What could she do there? Nothing,
But see him and be silent and so enrage,
Or see him and speak, and the more enrage.
The wise and affectionate Cynthia
Must break the engagement and give back the ring.
There is nothing but this that she can do.
She takes up a post at London University
And in lecturing and study passes the days.
No more of that.
She had read a paper to her pupils
And fellow-dons, the subject is
The development of Latin from the first early growth
Upon the Grecian models. The study entrances,
She finds and reads a Latin prayer:
‘I devote to Hades and Destruction’. It is a prayer
For time of battle, the thought is this:
I dedicate the enemy to Hades and Destruction. And perhaps
One or two of the praying Romans
Will devote also themselves
To Hades and Destruction. Rushing then into battle,
These ‘devoted’ people hope they may be killed. If not,
They are held for dead,
They are stateless, and in religion
Have no part at all. The gods have not accepted them,
They are alive, but yet they are destroyed.
In Cynthia’s life, this sad year
Was twice as long as all the happy years before. She must now
Withdraw from Georgie and see him miserable.
She is at work and fast within her family,
The happy careless laughter
Of the brothers and sisters
Rings her round,
She has the home tasks, too,
And thinks of Georgie.
At the end of the year, in the bitter snow that fell that Christmas
The phrenzied Minnims
Moved from their life-long-suburb.
The house of Over-Dew
Lay buried half in snow,
It stood five miles from any town upon a hillside.
Very bleak it was, and all the pipes were froze.
Mrs Minnim worked hard,
They had a girl to help them then she left.
Mrs Minnim had courage and was cheerful
But she was by now an old lady. Suddenly
There was the gift of a little money. Mr Minnim
Bought chasubles for visiting priests. But at first
There were no visitors at all, but only
The old cold house, and the lavatories frozen up
And wood kindling to be chopped and dried.
The work was bitter hard.
Mr Minnim, released suddenly
From the routine of his accountancy
Suffered in his head a strange numbness,
He moved about in a dream, would take no hand with the dishes. Even
When five-and-twenty missionaries came for a conference
He would do nothing.
He paced the garden plots, ‘And here’ he said,
‘I will build twelve lavatories. And in this room
We will have a consecration and build an altar.’
The thaw came and turned all to mud and slush,
There was still no post for Georgie, he came down from Oxford
And washed the dishes for his mother,
And chopped the wood and moved also in a daze,
The immense learning
Lay off from him, the crude work of the house
Was an excuse from study.
But now Mrs Minim was not happy, like a sad animal
She roamed the rooms of Over-Dew. This woman
Who had been so boisterous and so loving
With many friends, but still her own best thoughts
For Mr Minnim and their sons,
Was like a sad animal that cannot know a reason
Georgie, with the guilt of the excuse upon his heart,
Grew savage with her. The moody silences
Were shot with cruel words
It was so bitter cold within the house
Though now without the snow was melted and turned to slush.
The money situation preyed upon the mind of Mrs Minnim.
But her husband
Spoke of faith.
In the suburb where they once lived friends said:
How are the Minnims? Did you hear
That Mr Minnim has bought chasubles?
And then the foolish, unkind laughter: Chasubles!
It will be
The ruin of them, the end.
There was one hope that Mrs Minnim had, it was this,
That they might return at last to their house in the suburb,
She had refused to let her husband
Sell this house. No, that she would not allow. No,
That must be for a return.
But now, out of this refusal was made
The bitterness of their life at Over-Dew. For, said her husband,
You kept back the seven hundred and fifty pounds
We might have had for selling the house.
In London
The girl who should have been Georgie’s wife
Hears all; understands; loves Georgie; is helpless; reads to her class
The Latin prayer: I devote to Hades and Destruction.
She rules the harsh thoughts that run; cries;
‘Come, love of God.’
Oblivion
It was a human face in my oblivion
A human being and a human voice
That cried to me, Come back, come back, come back.
But I would not, I said I would not come back.
It was so sweet in my oblivion
There was a sweet mist wrapped round about
And I trod in a sweet and milky sea, knee deep,
That was so pretty a
nd so beautiful, growing deeper.
But still the voice cried out, Come back, come back,
Come back to me from sweet oblivion!
It was a human and related voice
That cried to me in pain. So I turned back.
I cannot help but like Oblivion better
Than being a human heart and human creature,
But I can wait for her, her gentle mist
And those sweet seas that deepen are my destiny
And must come even if not soon.
The Galloping Cat
Oh I am a cat that likes to
Gallop about doing good
So
One day when I was
Galloping about doing good, I saw
A Figure in the path; I said:
Get off! (Because
I am a cat that likes to
Gallop about doing good)
But he did not move, instead
He raised his hand as if
To land me a cuff
So I made to dodge so as to
Prevent him bringing it orf,
Un-for-tune-ately I slid
On a banana skin
Some Ass had left instead
Of putting in the bin. So
His hand caught me on the cheek
I tried
To lay his arm open from wrist to elbow
With my sharp teeth
Because I am
A cat that likes to gallop about doing good.
Would you believe it?
He wasn’t there
My teeth met nothing but air,
But a Voice said: Poor Cat
(Meaning me) and a soft stroke
Came on me head
Since when
I have been bald
I regard myself as
A martyr to doing good.
Also I heard a swoosh,
As of wings, and saw
A halo shining at the height of
Mrs Gubbins’s backyard fence,
So I thought: What’s the good
Of galloping about doing good
When angels stand in the path
And do not do as they should
Such as having an arm to be bitten off
All the same I
Intend to go on being
A cat that likes to
Gallop about doing good
So
Now with my bald head I go,
Chopping the untidy flowers down, to and fro,
An’ scooping up the grass to show
Underneath
The cinder path of wrath
Ha ha ha ha, ho,
Angels aren’t the only ones who do not know
What’s what and that
Galloping about doing good
Is a full-time job
That needs
An experienced eye of earthly
Sharpness, worth I dare say
(If you’ll forgive a personal note)
A good deal more
Than all that skyey stuff
Of angels that make so bold as
To pity a cat like me that
Gallops about doing good.
Hippy-Mo
I had a sweet bird